Office-impost.--One of the Most Important of Petitions.
The finest thing was his awakening in his European Settlement in the
giant Schadeck bed!--With the inflammatory, tickling, eating fever of
love in his breast; with the triumphant feeling that he had now got the
introductory programme of love put happily by; and with the sweet
resurrection from his living, prophetic burial; and with the joy that
now, among his thirties, he could, for the first time, cherish hopes of
a longer life (and did not longer mean at least till seventy?) than he
could ten years ago;--with all this stirring life-balsam, in which the
living fire-wheel of his heart was rapidly revolving, he lay here, and
laughed at his glancing portrait in the bed-canopy; but he could not do
it long; he was obliged to move. For a less happy man, it would have
been gratifying to have measured--as pilgrims measure with the length
of their pilgrimage, not so much by steps as by body-lengths, like
Earth-diameters--the superficial content of the bed. But Fixlein, for
his own part, had to launch from his bed into warm, billowy life; he
had now his dear good Earth again to look after, and a Conrectorship
thereon, and a bride to boot. Besides all this, his mother down-stairs
now admitted that he had last night actually glided through beneath the
scythe of Death, like supple grass, and that yesterday she had not told
him, merely out of fear of his fear. Still a cold shudder went over
him--especially as he was sober now--when he looked round at the high
Tarpeian Rock, four hours' distance behind him, on the battlements of
which he had last night walked hand in hand with Death.
The only thing that grieved him was, that it was Monday, and that he
must back to the Gymnasium. Such a freightage of joys he had never
taken with him on his road to town. After four, he issued from his
house, satisfied with coffee (which he drank in Hukelum merely for his
mother's sake, who, for two days after, would still have portions of
this woman's-wine to draw from the lees of the pot-sediment), into the
_cooling_ dawning May-morning (for joy needs coolness, sorrow sun); his
Betrothed comes--not indeed to meet him, but still--into his hearing,
by her distant morning hymn; he makes but one momentary turn into the
blissful haven of the blooming acacia-grove, which still, like the
covenant sealed in it, has no thorns; he dips his warm hand in the
cold-bath of the dewy leaves; he wades with pleasure through the
beautifying-water of the dew, which, as it imparts color to faces, eats
it away from boots ("but with thirty ducats, a Conrector may make shift
to keep two pairs of boots on the hook"). And now the Moon, as it were
the hanging seal of his last night's happiness, dips down into the
West, like an emptied bucket of light, and in the East the other
overrunning bucket, the Sun, mounts up, and the gushes of light flow
broader and broader.
The city stood in the celestial flames of Morning. Here his
divining-rod (his gold-roll, which, excepting one sixteenth of an inch
broken off from it, he carried along with him) began to quiver over all
the spots where booty and silver-veins of enjoyment were concealed; and
our rod-diviner easily discovered that the city and the future were a
true entire Potosi of delights.
In his Conrectorate closet he fell upon his knees and thanked God--not
so much for his heritage and bride as--for his life; for he had gone
away on Sunday morning with doubts whether he should ever come back;
and it was purely out of love to the reader, and fear lest he might
fret himself too much with apprehension, that I cunningly imputed
Fixlein's journey more to his desire of knowing what was in the will,
than of making his own will in presence of his mother. Every recovery
is a bringing back and palingenesia of our youth; one loves the Earth
and those that are on it with a new love. The Conrector could have
found in his heart to take all his class by the locks, and press them
to his breast; but he only did so to his adjutant, the Quartaner, who,
in the first Letter-box, was still sitting in the rank of a
Quintaner....
His first expedition, after school-hours, was to the house of Meister
Steinberger, where, without speaking a word, he counted down fifty
florins cash in ducats, on the table: "At last I repay you," said
Fixlein, "the moiety of my debt, and give you many thanks."
"Ey, Herr Conrector," said the Quartermaster, and continued calmly
stuffing puddings as before, "in my bond it is said, _payable at three
months' mutual notice_. How could a man like me go on, else? However, I
will change you the gold-pieces." Thereupon he advised him that it
might be more judicious to take back a florin or two, and buy himself
a better hat, and whole shoes. "If you like," added he, "to get a
calf-skin and half a dozen hare-skins dressed, they are lying
up-stairs." I should think, for my own part, that to the reader it must
be as little a matter of indifference as it was to the Butcher, whether
the hero of such a History appeared before him with an old tattered
potlid of a hat, and a pump-sucker and leg-harness pair of boots, or in
suitable apparel. In short, before St. John's day, the man was dressed
with taste and pomp.
But now came two most peculiarly important papers--at bottom only one,
the petition for the Hukelum parsonship--to be elaborated; in regard to
which I feel as if I myself must assist.... It were a simple turn, if
now at least the assembled public did not pay attention.
In the first place, the Conrector searched out and sorted all the
Consistorial and Councillor quittances, or rather the toll-bills of the
road-money, which he had been obliged to pay before the toll-gates at
the Quintusship and Conrectorship had been thrown open; for the
executor of the Schadeck testament had to reimburse him the whole, as
his discharge would express it, "to penny and farthing." Another would
have summed up his post-excise much more readily; by merely looking
what he--owed; as these debt-bills and those toll-bills, like parallel
passages, elucidate and confirm each other. But in Fixlein's case,
there was a small circumstance of peculiarity at work, which I cannot
explain till after what follows.
It grieved him a little that for his two offices he had been obliged
to pay and to borrow no larger a sum than 135 florins, 41 kreuzers,
and one halfpenny. The legacy, it is true, was to pass directly
from the hands of the testamentary executor into those of the
Regiments-Quartermaster; but yet he could have liked well had he--for
man is a fool from the very foundation of him--had more to pay, and
therefore to inherit. The whole Conrectorate he had, by a slight
deposit of 90 florins, plucked, as it were, from the Wheel of Fortune;
and so small a sum must surprise my reader; but what will he say, when
I tell him that there are countries where the entry-money into
school-rooms is even more moderate? In Scherau, a Conrector is charged
only 88 florins, and perhaps he may have an income triple of this sum.
Not to speak of Saxony (what, in truth, was to be expected from the
cradle of the Reformation, in Religion and Polite Literature), where a
schoolmaster and a parson have _nothing_ to pay,--even in Baireuth, for
example, in Hof, the progress of improvement has been such that a
Quartus,--a Quartus, do I say,--a Tertius--a Tertius, do I say,--a
Conrector,--at entrance on his post, is not required to pay down more
than:--
Fl.rhen. Kr.rhen.
30 49 For taking the oaths at the Consistorium.
4 0 To the Syndic for the Presentation.
2 0 To the then Burgermeister.
45 71/2 For the Government-sanction.
---------------
Total, 81 fl. 561/2 kr.
If the printing-charges of a Rector do stand a little higher in some
points, yet, on the other hand, a Tertius, Quartus, &c., come cheaper
from the press than even a Conrector. Now, it is clear, that in this
case a schoolmaster can subsist; since, in the course of the very first
year, he gets an overplus beyond this _dockmoney_ of his office. A
schoolmaster must, like his scholars, have been advanced from class to
class, before these his loans to Government, together with the interest
for delay of payment, can jointly amount to so much as his yearly
income in the highest class. Another thing in his favor is, that our
institutions do not--as those of Athens did--prohibit people from
entering on office while in debt; but every man, with his debt-knapsack
on his shoulders, mounts up, step after step, without obstruction. The
Pope, in large benefices, appropriates the income of the first year,
under the title of _Annates_, or First-Fruits; and accordingly he, in
all cases, bestows any large benefice on the possessor of a smaller
one, thereby to augment both his own revenues and those of others; but
it shows, in my opinion, a bright distinction between Popery and
Lutheranism, that the Consistoriums of the latter abstract from their
school-ministers and church-ministers not perhaps above two thirds of
their first yearly income; though they too, like the Pope, must
naturally have an eye to vacancies.
It may be that I shall here come in collision with the Elector of
Mentz, when I confess, that, in Schmausen's _Corp. jur. pub. Germ_., I
have turned up the Mentz-Imperial-Court-Chancery-tax-ordinance of
the 6th January, 1659, and there investigated how much this same
Imperial-Court-Chancery demands, as contrasted with a Consistorium. For
example, any man that wishes to be baked or sodden into a _Poet
Laureate_, has 50 florins tax-dues, and 20 florins Chancery-dues, to
pay down; whereas, for 20 florins more, he might have been made a
Conrector, who is a poet of this species, as it were by the by and _ex
officio_. The institution of a Gymnasium is permitted for 1,000
florins; an extraordinary sum, with which the whole body of the
teachers in the instituted Gymnasium might with us clear off the
entry-moneys of their school-rooms. Again, a Freiherr, who, at any
rate, often enough grows old without knowing how, must purchase the
_venia aetatis_ with 200 hard florins; while, with the half sum, he
might have become a schoolmaster, and here _age_ would have come of its
own accord. And a thousand such things! They prove, however, that
matters can be at no bad pass in our Governments and Circles, where
promotions are sold dearer to Folly than to Diligence, and where it
costs more to institute a school than to serve in one.
The remarks I made on this subject to a Prince, as well as the remarks
a Town-syndic made on it to myself, are too remarkable to be omitted
for mere dread of digressiveness.
The Syndic--a man of enlarged views, and of fiery patriotism, the
warmth of which was the more beneficent that he collected all the beams
of it into one focus, and directed them to himself and his family--gave
me (I had perhaps been comparing the School-bench and the School-stair
to the _bench_ and the _ladder_, on which people are laid when about to
be tortured) the best reply: "If a schoolmaster consume nothing but 30
reichsthalers;[52] if he annually purchase manufactured goods,
according as Political Economists have calculated for each individual,
namely, to the amount of 5 reichsthalers; and no more hundred-weights
of victual than these assume, namely, 10; in short, if he live like a
substantial wood-cutter, then the Devil must be in it if he cannot
yearly lay by so much net profit as shall, in the long run, pay the
interest of his entry debts."
The Syndic must have failed to convince me at that time, since I
afterwards told the Flachsenfingen Prince:[53]
"Illustrious sir, you know not, but I do,--not a player in your Theatre
would act the Schoolmaster in Engel's _Prodigal Son_, three nights
running, for such a sum as every real Schoolmaster has to take for
acting it all the days of the year. In Prussia, invalids are made
Schoolmasters; with us, Schoolmasters are made invalids." ....
But to our story! Fixlein wrote out the inventory of his Crown-debts;
but with quite a different purpose than the reader will guess, who has
still the Schadeck testament in his head. In one word, he wanted to be
Parson of Hukelum. To be a clergyman, and in the place where his cradle
stood, and all the little gardens of his childhood, his mother also,
and the grove of betrothment,--this was an open gate into a New
Jerusalem, supposing even that the living had been nothing but a meagre
penitentiary. The main point was, he might marry, if he were appointed.
For, in the capacity of lank Conrector, supported only by the
strengthening-girth of his waistcoat, and with emoluments whereby
scarcely the purchase-money of a--purse was to be come at; in this way
he was more like collecting wick and tallow for his burial torch than
for his bridal one.
For the Schoolmaster class are, in well-ordered states, as little
permitted to marry as the soldiery. In _Conringius de Antiquitatibus
Academicis_, where in every leaf it is proved that all cloisters were
originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our schools are now
cloisters, and consequently we endeavor to maintain in our teachers at
least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows. The Vow of Obedience
might perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School-Inspectors; but the
second vow, that of Celibacy, would be more hard of attainment, were it
not that, by one of the best political arrangements, the third vow, I
mean a beautiful equality in Poverty, is so admirably attended to,
that no man who has made it needs any further _testimonium
paupertatis_;--and now _let_ this man, if he likes, lay hold of a
matrimonial half, when of the two halves each has a whole stomach, and
nothing for it but half-coins and half-beer!...
I know well, millions of my readers would themselves compose this
Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeck to his
Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, with the
annexed wedding-mansion; for they see clearly enough, that directly
thereafter one of the best Letter-Boxes would be written that ever came
from such a repository.
Fixlein's Petition was particularly good and striking; it submitted to
the Rittmeister four grounds of preference: 1. "He was a native of the
parish; his parents and ancestors had already done Hukelum service;
therefore he prayed," &c.
2. "The here documented official debts of 135 florins, 41 kreuzers, and
one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to-be-forgotten
testament secured him, he himself could clear, in case he obtained the
living, and so hereby give up his claim to the legacy," &c.
_Voluntary Note by me_. It is plain he means to bribe his Godfather,
whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. But, gentle reader,
blame not without mercy a poor, oppressed, heavy-laden school-man and
school-horse for an indelicate insinuation, which truly was never mine.
Consider, Fixlein knew that the Rittmeister was a cormorant towards the
poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may be, too, the
Conrector might once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons
by whom not indeed the church and churchyard--though these things are
articles of commerce in England--so much as the true management of
them, had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I know
from Lange,[54] that the Church must support its patron, when he has
nothing to live upon; and might not a nobleman, before he actually
began begging, be justified in taking a little advance, a fore-payment
of his alimentary moneys, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer?--
3. "He had lately betrothed himself with Fraeulein von Thiennette, and
given her a piece of gold, as marriage-pledge; and could therefore wed
the said Fraeulein, were he once provided for," &c.
_Voluntary Note by me_. I hold this ground to be the strongest in the
whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, Thiennette's
genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten, and
full of millepedes; she was his [Oe]conoma, his Castle-Stewardess, and
Legatess _a Latere_ for his domestics; and with her pretensions for an
alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden to him. His
indignant wish that she had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy
might now be fulfilled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will
have the third ground to thank for it; not at all the mad fourth....
4. "He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, which he
had purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant Egidius in German; and
that the dog had drawn upon him the displeasure of his Lordship. Far be
it from him so to designate the Shock in future; but he would take it
as a special grace, if for the dog, which he at present called without
any name, his Lordship would be pleased to appoint one himself."
_My Voluntary Note_. The dog then, it seems, to which the nobleman has
hitherto been godfather, is to receive its name a _second_ time from
him!--But how can the famishing gardener's son, whose career never
mounted higher than from the school-bench to the school-chair, and who
never spoke with polished ladies, except singing, namely in the church,
how can he be expected, in fingering such a string, to educe from it
any finer tone than the pedantic one? And yet the source of it lies
deeper; not the contracted _situation_, but the contracted _eye_, not a
favorite science, but a narrow plebeian soul, makes us pedantic,--a
soul that cannot _measure_ and _separate_ the _concentric_ circles of
human knowledge and activity, that confounds the focus of universal
human life, by reason of the focal distance, with every two or three
converging rays; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all---- In
short, the true Pedant is the Intolerant.
The Conrector wrote out his Petition splendidly in five propitious
evenings; employed a peculiar ink for the purpose; worked not indeed so
long over it as the stupid Manucius over a Latin letter, namely, some
months, if Scioppius's word is to be taken; still less so long as
another scholar at a Latin epistle, who--truly we have nothing but
Morhof's word for it--hatched it during four whole months; inserting
his variations, adjectives, feet, with the authorities for his phrases,
accurately marked between the lines. Fixlein possessed a more
thoroughgoing genius, and had completely mastered the whole enterprise
in sixteen days. While sealing, he thought, as we all do, how this
cover was the seed-husk of a great entire Future, the rind of many
sweet or bitter fruits, the swathing of his whole after life.
Heaven bless his cover; but I let you throw me from the Tower of Babel,
if he get the parsonage; can't you see, then, that Aufhammer's hands
are tied? In spite of all his other faults, or even because of them, he
will stand like iron by his word, which he has given so long ago to the
Subrector. It were another matter had he been resident at Court; for
there, where old German manners still are, no promise is kept; for as,
according to Moeser, the Ancient Germans kept only such promises as they
made in the _forenoon_ (in the afternoon they were all dead-drunk),--so
the Court Germans likewise keep no afternoon promise; forenoon ones
they would keep if they made any, which, however, cannot possibly
happen, as at those hours they are--sleeping.